Discrete Bids and Empirical Inference in Divisible Good Auctions
研究了完美可分物品统一价格拍卖中投标人提交离散出价点的模型，揭示了多单位拍卖与寡头行为的联系，并利用捷克国债拍卖数据证明离散出价对经验分析有重要影响，提出评估机制绩效的替代方法。
I examine a model of a uniform price auction of a perfectly divisible good with private information in which the bidders submit discrete bidpoints rather than continuous downward sloping demand functions. I characterize necessary conditions for equilibrium bidding. The characterization reveals a close relationship between bidding in multiunit auctions and oligopolistic behaviour. I demonstrate that a recently proposed indirect approach to the revenue comparisons of discriminatory and uniform price auctions is not valid if bid functions have steps. In particular, bidders may bid above their marginal valuation in a uniform price auction. In order to demonstrate that discrete bidding can have important consequences for empirical analysis I use my model to examine a data set consisting of individual bids in uniform price treasury auctions of the Czech government. I propose an alternative method for evaluating the performance of the employed mechanism. My results suggest that the uniform price auction performs well, both in terms of efficiency of the allocation and in terms of revenue maximization. I estimate that the employed mechanism failed to extract at most 3 basis points in terms of the annual yield of T-bills worth of expected surplus while implementing an allocation resulting in almost all the efficient surplus. Failing to account for discreteness of bids would in my application result in overestimating the unextracted revenue by more than 50%.